TRINITY — A new compensation plan that increases salaries and benefits was approved Monday night by the Trinity School Board. The board had worked on a plan to give each teacher at least at $1,200 per year pay hike plus an increased allotment to pay for health insurance. Under the plan approved Monday, the starting pay for a beginning teacher was raised to $36,000 per year. In related action, the board agreed to discontinue offering new employees "longevity pay," although current employees would be "grandfathered" and allowed to continue to collect it. Superintendent David Plymale said that with the new compensation plan, he did not feel the longevity pay program was needed to attract new teachers. In addition to the raises granted to teachers, the board also approved a $1 per hour increase to the school's support staff and a 5% increase for administrators. School construction In other business Monday night, the board was notified that the construction of a new classroom wing at Lansberry Elementary School (LES) was to have begun on Tuesday, June. 25. The district is building additional classrooms to house the fifth grade, which is being moved to LES starting in August. Until the new construction is completed in January, the fifth graders will attend classes in portable buildings. Under the overall project, the school district has shut down the Trinity Intermediate School campus and relocated the fifth grade to LES and the sixth grade to Trinity Middle School. Other business During the meeting, the board also: • Named Rich Mayer of Conroe as the new Trinity Middle School principal and named David Keithley as the new Special Education Director. • Received an attendance and preliminary STAAR test results report from Curriculum Director Dr. Steve Brownlee. In the attendance report, Brownlee said that during the 2012-13 school year, the district had a 94.5% student attendance rating, down slightly from the 95.7% recorded during the 2011-12 school year. Trinity High School had the lowest attendance at 92.3% this past year and Brownlee said work began before the end of the year to implement new programs and activities to help make students want to come to school.